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Is water the key to cheaper nanoelectronics?

WATER and electronics don’t usually mix. But a splash of the wet stuff could help make nanoelectronic manufacturing both quicker and cheaper.

Building nanoscale electronic components often involves growing the tiny structures in separate layers and transferring them onto a chip one by one. Moving these layers currently takes strong chemicals and high temperatures. Now Cees Dekker at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience in Delft, the Netherlands, has found a way to do the job using plain old water (Nano Letters, DOI&colon; 10.1021/nl1008037).

They deposited graphene shapes onto silicon wafers and dipped them into a polymer solution that dries …